Woody vs Teddy

Below, when Woodrow Wilson refers to “the third party” he’s referring to Theodore Roosevelt’s party that claimed to be for the common man while supporting monopolies. Their argument was that you can’t stop them, so the best you can do is hope that they will be kind. See where that gets us.

“The third party says that the present system of our industry and trade has come to stay. Mind you, these artificially built up things, these things that can’t maintain themselves in the market without monopoly, have come to stay, and the only thing that the government can do, the only thing that the third party proposes should be done, is to set up a commission to regulate them. It accepts them. It says: “We will not undertake, it were futile to undertake, to prevent monopoly, but we will go into an arrangement by which we will make these monopolies kind to you. We will guarantee that they shall be pitiful. We will guarantee that they shall pay the right wages. We will guarantee that they shall do everything kind and public-spirited, which they have never heretofore shown the least inclination to do.”

“Don’t you realize that that is a blind alley? You can’t find your way to liberty that way.”

Wilson, Woodrow. “Chapter 9/Benevolence or Justice?” The New Freedom; a Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People. New York and Garden City: Doubleday, Page, 1913. 196-197. Print.